Americans ‘increasingly believe that their own institutions don’t work’

 A volatile President Trump era and the fallout from the recent presidential election has pushed Americans toward disillusionment with the U.S. political system, according to political scientist Ian Bremmer.

“When I think about the future of my country and what that country means, the average American no longer believes that the institutions actually work for them,” Bremmer, geopolitical experts and founder of the Eurasia Group, said in an interview on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “So you get the massive anti-establishment sentiment. … You get people that increasingly believe that their own institutions don't work.”

While faith in certain aspects of America — including the U.S. dollar and American higher education institutions — remains relatively high, he added, “nobody looks at the U.S. and says: ‘I want my political system to look like that.’”

Bremmer recalled moments of great pride and patriotism when the Berlin Wall dividing communist East Germany and West Germany fell in 1989, or when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, believing that they happened because “our ideas were better.”

Today’s challenges are so deep and so structural, Bremmer added, that “Biden becoming president doesn't suddenly fix any of that, even if his inclination is to be much more of a unifying force.”

Faith in government ‘eroding for many decades’

American’s trust in the federal government in handling major problems has fallen nearly to all-time lows, according to Gallup.

Based on an annual poll conducted between August 31 and September 31, 2020, Gallup found that about 48% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of confidence in the government to handle international problems and 41% on its ability to handle domestic problems.

Source - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-institutions-public-trust-bremmer-141825950.html